First-year Computer Science student Carly Wilson will be part of the England Taekwondo Senior team competing at the European Championships in Poland this month.

After taking up Taekwondo six years ago, Carly was hooked after just one lesson. Over the years she has steadily improved her status and, as well as competing internationally she is working towards her Third Dan (the ‘Dans’ in Taekwondo are the stages which comes after the ‘Black Belt’ stage).

There are nine Dans in Taekwondo and each one takes progressively longer than the previous one. Carly hopes to achieve her Third Dan later this year, but forecasts that it will be many years before she reaches the ninth.

Taekwondo originated in Korea as a martial art and combat sport. Its popularity – it is now the most popular martial art in the world in terms of number of practitioners – has resulted in the sport developing in different ways. World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) is an Olympic sport which is sparring-based with full contact. International Taekwondo Federation (ITF), which is Carly’s sport, is a more traditional style, with semi-contact in matches.

Carly will be competing in Poland between 16 and 18 May, in the 2nd Dan patterns section.

Later in the summer she is also going to Spain for a four nations tournament involving Portugal, Spain, Germany and England, then spending time in training and competitions in readiness for the World Cup in Italy in October.

Accelerating the development of drugs to treat malaria and avian flu is one potential benefit from new grid software which has just been released.

The software has been developed by OMII-Europe, a two-year European Union- funded project led by the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).

OMII-Europe provides world-wide leadership on the integration of major grid computing platforms together with the implementation of emerging open standards to facilitate benefits for the wider community. Forthcoming versions of Europe’s main grid platforms such as UNICORE and gLite will incorporate software developed by OMII-Europe so that researchers can access grid computing resources with the flexibility of the Internet.

OMII-Europe was established in 2006 and the University of Southampton was appointed as the co-ordinating partner within a 16-partner project involving major European, American and Chinese institutes involved in grid middleware development.

OMII-Eur0pe was established to provide key software components for building e-Infrastructures within the European Research Area (ERA). The initial focus for OMII-Europe was to facilitate the development and porting of a common set of application level services to a number of major grid software distributions, and to develop tighter interoperability between those distributions.

These software components are also being adopted by a number of other European research initiatives such as WISDOM which is focused on developing drugs for malaria and other neglected and emerging diseases. Dr Alistair Dunlop, who was instrumental in forging this collaboration, commented: 'Up until now, scientists could only talk to their own networks. Our software makes it possible for them to talk across various networks and to take forward the state of the art in grid technology and increase the range of computational power available to e-scientists.'

The first of a new series of ECS Energy Lectures takes place on Wednesday 14 May with a presentaton by Professor Mark O'Malley of University College Dublin.

Renewable energy has the potential to simultaneously reduce Ireland’s harmful emissions and improve its security of supply. This presentation will concentrate on renewable energy for the bulk production of electricity. The renewable resources will be introduced and costs characteristics will be compared. These comparisons are limited as they do not take into account the need to harvest this energy via the electricity network (i.e. the grid) and the associated technical issues of integration of these renewable resources. Variable renewable resources such as wind, wave and solar pose particular challenges due to the need to maintain real time supply demand balance i.e. frequency control. These issues will be developed further and the need for reserves and flexible plant will be discussed.

In addition the capacity value concept will be introduced and the role of forecasting, storage and inertia will be described. The reasons for curtailing renewable energy resources (i.e. dumping the energy) will be briefly illustrated. Further harvesting challenges e.g. network development will be briefly covered before the results of a full techno economic analysis of grid integrated wind power in Ireland are given and the other relevant renewable grid integration studies will be highlighted. The opportunity for Ireland to lead the world in the development of solutions to the harvesting of renewable energy will be highlighted before conclusions and further work are put forward for consideration.

Prof O'Malley is the Professor of Electrical Engineering at University College Dublin (UCD) and the Director of the industry supported Electricity Research Centre. He is a member of the Engineering Sciences Panel of the European Research Council and a Member of the IEEE Ethics and Member Conduct Committee. He is a technical consultant to the All Island Grid Study and regularly consults to clients in the Electricity Industry.

The lecture begins at 4 pm in the Nightingale Lecture Theatre, with tea and biscuits available from 3.30 pm. All are welcome.

Researchers in the ECS Nano Group have won the 2007 award for best paper in Measurement Science, given by the Institute of Physics journal, Measurement Science and Technology.

The paper, 'Broadband single cell impedance spectroscopy using maximum length sequences: theoretical analysis and practical considerations' was written by Tao Sun, Shady Gawad, Catia Bernabini, Nicolas G Green and Hywel Morgan.

It describes a novel impedance spectroscopic measurement method for applications in the identification of biological cells. The frequency-dependent impedance is obtained in the frequency domain by applying a fast M-sequence transform (FMT), and a fast Fourier transform (FFT) in the time domain response. Using FMT, the evaluation takes place within a short timescale of the order of milliseconds. This technique is used in a microfluidic impedance cytometer, for the analysis of single biological cells in suspension. The theory of the technique is analysed in depth. It is then applied to an experimental system that characterizes the impedance spectrum of red blood cells within the microfluidic system. Measured spectra show good agreement with simulations.

The journal citation noted: 'The paper has a short but excellent introduction, supported by a solid reference list of about 55 papers describing related work. Most of these papers are citations from 2000 onwards. This is followed by a detailed analysis of maximum length sequences and theory used for predictions of spectra. It then continues with a useful description of a cytometer that was used to confirm theoretical predictions of spectra. Results are at an early stage.

'The system is still under development, since there are issues arising from the fact that the particle flows during the acquisition of data, and is not static in the electric field as assumed by the model. Nevertheless, the paper possesses good clarity of the motivation behind the work, of the measurement techniques developed and of the potential relevance to applications in the life sciences.'

In April, Weidong Gong, a third-year PhD student in the Nano Group, supervised by Professor Hywel Morgan, Dr Michael Kraft and Dr Matt Mowlem, won third prize in the student poster competition at the Conference Oceans'08 MTS/IEEE Kobe-Techno-Ocean-08, held in Japan. The subject of his poster was 'Oceanographic sensor for in-situ temperature and conductivity monitoring'. He has already designed a double beam spectrosocopy for nitrite sensor, and is also developing a precision temperature and conductivity sensor for in-situ application.

The Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, in China, and the University of Southampton have agreed to set up a joint laboratory focused on Web Science.

The signing ceremony of the Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University- Southampton University Web Science Laboratory (Tsinghua-Southampton Web Science Laboratory at Shenzhen for short) was held at the Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University.

The Southampton delegation was led by the vice chancellor, Professor Bill Wakeham, accompanied by Professors Wendy Hall, Nigel Shadbolt and Lu Maozu. The opening ceremony culminated with the signing of the agreement between Tsinghua and Southampton universities by Professor Guan Zhicheng, Dean of the Graduate School, and the Vice-Chancellor of Southampton.

In his welcome speech, Professor Guan Zhicheng spoke about the similarities of the Graduate School and the University of Southampton and promised full cooperation. Professor Bill Wakeham enthusiastically addressed the ceremony and spoke of the changes happening in the city of Southampton and the achievement of its University. He said that like Shenzhen, Southampton is a coastal city, and traditionally had a high employment in its docks. With the reduction of this, Southampton has had to retrain its workforce particularly in the high tech area. He wished the laboratory between the universities success, and expressed a hope that it would also be a platform for further cooperation. This was the Vice-Chancellor's second visit to the Graduate School.

After the signing of the agreement, the afternoon saw lectures from three professors of Tsinghua and Southampton. Professor Wu Jianping, Department of Computer Science, Tsinghua University, gave the lecture on ‘Challenging and Opportunity on Next Generation Internet’. From the School of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton, Professors Nigel Shadbolt and Wendy Hall gave lectures on web science, on ‘Technology’ and ‘People’ respectively. Professor Wu and Professor Hall are the Directors of the joint lab.

The ECS programmes in Electronic, Electrical and Electromechanical Engineering were successfully reaccredited by the IET during a panel visit to the School this month.

The two-day visit to the School by the Institute of Engineering and Technology's accreditation panel was the final stage of a process that ensures that ECS programmes can fully satisfy the requirements leading to the professional Chartered Engineer status.

As well as thoroughly examining all aspects of the School’s education provision, including processes and quality assurance. The members of the panel also spoke to 25 students across the relevant programmes. The panel were impressed by the positive comments made by the students, and by the high quality and standard of student work, some of which they felt was very advanced.

The MEng programme was fully accredited as meeting the requirements towards Chartered Engineer status for 2008-2012 student intakes; the BEng and MSc programmes are accredited as partially meeting the requirements (the maximum that can be gained due to the nature of these programmes). The ECS contingent was led by Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Deputy Head of School (Education) and Dr Andy Gravell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, with support from members of the ECS academic staff.

'Professional accreditation and being able to successfuly satisfy the standards of the accrediting bodies are extremely important for our students,' said Dr Andy Gravell. 'When they go out into the world of work, they can be assured that their degrees meet the highest professional standards.'

The School will receive a visit from the British Computer Society next May (2009) for continued accreditation of programmes in Computer Science, Software Engineering and Information Technology in Organisations.

Professor Wendy Hall has been awarded a Guest Professorship at Tsinghua University in China, only the seventh UK academic to have received this honour.

Tsinghua Vice Provost Zhang Yi presided at the ceremony and presented the honorary appointment book to Professor Hall. After the ceremony, Professor Hall delivered a speech entitled 'Towards a Science of the Web'. Professor Sun Maosong, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Technology, and Professor Ma Hui, Associate Dean of the Tsinghua University Graduate School at Shenzhen, also attended the ceremony.

As a result of the collaboration with Professor Hall, Tsinghua and the University of Southampton have agreed to establish a Tsinghua-Southampton Web Science Laboratory at the Graduate School in Shenzhen.

First-year Computer Science student Carly Wilson won a Bronze Medal at the European Taekwondo Championships which took place in Poland earlier this month.

Carly won her medal in the 2nd Dan Patterns section, a significant achievement, given that the judgement of Patterns is particularly gruelling.

Carly will now concentrate on taking her exams, before beginning training for further competitions over the summer, as part of the Senior England team. Later in the summer she is also going to Spain for a four nations tournament involving Portugal, Spain, Germany and England, then spending time in training and competitions in readiness for the World Cup in Italy in October.

Taekwondo originated in Korea as a martial art and combat sport. Its popularity – it is now the most popular martial art in the world in terms of number of practitioners – has resulted in the sport developing in different ways. World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) is an Olympic sport which is sparring-based with full contact. International Taekwondo Federation (ITF), which is Carly’s sport, is a more traditional style, with semi-contact in matches.

As the end of the academic year approaches and exam season looms, ECS students are in the midst of project presentation days.

The Part II projects have all culminated this week, with possibly the most hotly contested event being the trial of robot vehicles that were designed and constructed in the Electrical/Electromechanical Engineering Design and Manufacture project.

This project aims to develop students’ skills in areas including project management, teamwork, time management and communication, through the design, build and test of a PIC-controlled autonomous vehicle which is able to perform to a predefined specification.

The seven vehicles were put through their paces in front of the whole class, and the course leaders, Dr Paul Lewin and Dr Paul Chappell, and there were nerve-racking moments as some of the vehicles proved temperamental on the course. The winning team, with a fabulous time of 19 seconds to complete the course and do all the manoeuvres, was Terri Brain, Jack Hunter, Tom Redman, Ben Strawbridge and Lewis Carpenter.

‘Looking around the room I saw students who had forgotten that this was coursework. For most of us this had ceased being about the marks – competition had taken over and our hearts raced too as our robots hurtled around the track towards the finish line, every second counting,’said student Jevan Bryant.

Project presentation days continue this week, culminating on 16 June the final-year MEng students in ECS will present their work for the Part IV Individual Research Project in a day-long conference.

Members of the winning group in this year's Software Design Project were each awarded a PURE digital radio by project sponsors Imagination Technologies.

The Software Design Group Project requires second-year Electronics students to produce a novel software application designed to run on an HP iPAQ. Working in teams over the second semester, the students have to produce an application which makes use of the built-in GPS, uses a database, has a clearly designed user interface, is coded in C sharp, and is designed for the Southampton area.

This year’s project was sponsored by Imagination Technologies and judged by members of the School’s research staff. On the final presentation day the students had to present and demonstrate their application to the rest of the class and the judges, including course leader Dr Mark Weal.

The sixteen teams of five students had come up with a wide range of applications, such as a device which charted a vehicle’s progress through a city’s congestion charge areas. A number of exercise applications were submitted as well as events planners and guides to the City. However, the winner was Treasure Quest, an interactive game which would be especially useful at the ECS Freshers JumpStart week. Team members were: Charles Adlington, Kent Cheung, Sze Mien Lee, David Reed, and Ross Thompson.

The whole class was congratulated by Imagination Technologies Marketing Manager Mike Hopkins for the commercial viability of their projects.

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